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Spotify Camp Nou: What Spotify & FC Barcelona’s Sponsorship Deal Means for the Music Industry
- umamacommunication
- Mar 25, 2022
- 2 min read
Over the weekend, it was announced that soccer team FC Barcelona agreed to a four-year $310 million sponsorship deal with Spotify, the world’s most popular audio streaming platform, making Spotify the team's main partner. As part of the deal, Barcelona’s stadium will be renamed to “Spotify Camp Nou”, their jerseys and training shirts will include the Spotify logo, and Spotify advertisements will be displayed throughout the stadium and during broadcasts. This is the first major partnership between a music company and sports team and is an exciting development in marketing for both the music and sports worlds. As stated in the team’s official press release, “The partnership reached by Barça and Spotify is a first-of-its-kind for the club in bringing the worlds of Music and Football together, giving a global stage to players and artists at the Spotify Camp Nou Stadium, and building new opportunities to connect artists and players with fans around the world,”.
In an increasingly digital music industry, Spotify has become the main driver for artist discovery, with musicians growing their audience through tools like Spotify for Artists, playlist promotion, and pre-save campaigns. With the new sponsorship deal, Spotify plans to not only market their platform, but also utilize the space to promote artists on a global scale. Spotify’s Chief Business Officer Alex Norström explained that the company is “working with Barça to leverage our access to in-stadium elements to amplify artists and enable discovery. For example, using the dynamic digital displays to showcase and geo-target relevant artists to Barça’s global TV audience. While viewers in Europe may see a message about one artist, TV viewers in India could be served a different and locally relevant message.” Spotify’s commitment to using their marketing space to help promote individual artists in their target markets separates them from other music companies and simultaneously creates new opportunities for their platform’s growth.
Although Spotify remains committed to “supporting artists to make a living off their art and connecting with fans”, according to Norström, the sponsorship deal is not without its critics. Tim Ingham from Music Business Worldwide was quick to point out that according to his calculations, the $310 million that Spotify is paying FC Barcelona is more than the company has ever paid an artist in royalties. While Spotify has resurrected the recorded music industry from its lowest point in the mid-2000s and commits themselves to helping artists, they continue to have a tentative relationship with musicians due to their extraordinarily low royalty payouts and their neglect of songwriters. As Ingham stated, “the news that Spotify can find a spare $310 million to ink a deal like this with Barcelona may be rather hard to swallow for those in the songwriting community who have watched Spotify appeal a royalty pay-rise for composers and publishers in the US”.
While Spotify certainly has a lot of ground to cover in terms of its relationship with artists and the music industry as a whole, they have consistently been a forward-thinking company committed to growing not only their platform but also the careers of artists. The deal with FC Barcelona exemplifies this and it will be interesting to see how it changes the landscape of music marketing and the industry as a whole.
By: Jordan Chesebrough
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